Jeane: In this next dream it seems like I’m at the department store that my folks had when I was young. I’m an adult and I’m with a group of people who are mingling together, or visiting, in the store. I know we’re not really working.
It’s around Halloween time. I’m going to leave with another person in a few minutes and then come back in my Halloween costume. I’ll be wearing black paint or a mask around my eyes, and then a full veil will cover me like a chador.
That’s my costume, but I’m taking the time to explain to someone what I’ll look like when I return because I don’t want to unsettle anyone with my dramatically changed appearance. Even though I realize that a Halloween costume is meant to surprise people, I’m trying to make sure that no one is overly shocked.
John: That’s an amazing illustration of the dichotomy that one faces when the spiritual aspect tries to relate to something that’s set in its nature, or that’s in the physical realms and has to obey the laws of the physical.
So you’re feeling that you’re connected to something that’s more expansive (the higher self), and you know that there tends to be a gap that exists between what you’re hearing inside and responding to, and what most other people hear and respond to.
In terms of trying to bring a balance to this situation, in a way that allows you to be yourself, you’re trying to reconcile what you can channel through you from the higher into the lower, i.e., channel it through and manifest it in the physical realms.
In the dream, by explaining your costume (which is an outfit with religious associations), you’re trying to make that effect or result something that’s recognized by others. You are recognized in your “normal” costume, but there’s something else to you, and you don’t want to be strictly identified, or pigeonholed, in relationship to either state. It’s like you have a self-consciousness at the spiritual level.
Instead of being able to flow freely, without inhibitions, in terms of your force-of-nature quality, you’re attempting to streamline that in such a way that it comes across in a form that can be accepted. At the same time as it’s accepted, what others see you as in physical form, shouldn’t be automatically associated with this being all there is about you.
So in wanting to be accepted, you also want all that there is about you to come across, or come through, in terms of what you sense, and feel, and the breadth of your wholeness. You have the idea that no single aspect of your expression is the be-all, end-all of who you are, and you want others to realize that. If they can, you’ll feel that this will result in them giving you the latitude to become still more than what’s perceivable by them (in a physical way).
The problem is, you’re also trying to take the limited faculties of the physical (sight, sound, etc) and, in a sense, asking them to let go to the fact that there’s something much greater than what’s easily perceivable. If you can somehow get that to happen, simply because you say it’s so, then it will be let go and all will be well.
Unfortunately, everything around us has it’s outer, physical characteristic. It’s like the root system that holds the energetic portrayal. Yet in a spiritual endeavor, you can’t truly connect to the higher while still maintaining a strong grip on physical. The physical experience can’t be your first premise – it’s a secondary aspect to the inner you.
So the physical manifestation, that is a human being, is always going to be, to some degree, projecting an outer characteristic. Somehow or another we all have to find this common medium between the two – between the energy and the matter – by which things grow, shift, and change. That’s what living in the physical and having the connection to the inner, higher self, is all about.
